Baidu, China’s largest search provider by far, yesterday launched its first major overseas venture with a move into Japan. Baidu is to compete against Yahoo! Japan and Google Japan, which together have a near-duopoly on the search engine market, commanding a combined total market share of 89.5%. Baidu enjoys a 54.6% dominant share in its home market. Baidu opened a trial version of its Japanese service last March that only allowed users to search for websites and pictures. This week’s launch includes access to videos, travel and restaurant information on all Japanese language sites.

Analysts believe Baidu is likely to focus most of its efforts on the mobile search market as it strives for Japanese growth. “In order to succeed in Japan, Baidu will have to form a relationship with a Japanese [mobile] carrier,” Takashi Murakami, an analyst at Credit Suisse, told the Financial Times. Japan is regarded as a pioneer region in the development of mobile Internet services. Meanwhile Google today enhanced its own offering in Japan with plans to bring its search services to local operator NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode handsets from Spring this year.